Last edited by duped_samaritan; 11-04-2019 at 05:32 PM.
and yet you seem to be very game on the assertion that he will do so in a way that negatively impacts people who currently have private health care, which is super weird considering he literally penned the 'lets curb stomp the medical industry lobbyist' theme song and that they are the exact reason why people in the united states thinks it actually costs thousands of dollars to fix a broken arm.
"Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness." - Alejandro Jodorowsky
"America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers." -- William S. Burroughs
actually, i didn't say his plan would be a negative and even mentioned that maybe his plan would help things. what i am concerned about is the fact that running on a platform of taking away your private insurance in favor of medicare is politically unpopular. my main concern is beating trump. to his credit, i'm sure bernie knows his plan makes him politically vulnerable, but he's sticking to his guns cause he genuinely believes it's what's needed.
it's an admirable quality (and the opposite of the way most politicians think) but i'm scared of the impact on moderates in a general election. then again, his opponent would be an honest-to-god retard, so i'm not sure what to think.
If Biden dropped dead, what do you guys think Petes chances would be?
"Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness." - Alejandro Jodorowsky
"America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers." -- William S. Burroughs
I love my healthcare. My wife is a nurse so I’m on Her plan instead of through my employer. The plan is top top. We had a baby about a year ago, $250. Any trip to emergency room, $50. I’m going to get snipped in a couple weeks, $75. We’d be super pissed if someone took our healthcare away. From my military days I’ve experienced what it’s like when everyone has “free healthcare”, I sure as shit don’t want to go back to that. Gay Pete’s plan of Medicare for everyone that wants it sounds better to me if it’s actually feasible.
All those numbers would be $0 with medicare (maybe not the snip, not sure).
The number that really matters though are what your wife is paying for healthcare. The real questions are will the tax increase be less than what you're paying annually right now and will you have access to the same or better quality care.
This is mostly correct, but believe it or not, the absurdly high cost of American healthcare is NOT the fault of insurance companies. Sure, insurance companies have their issues, and they are profiting handsomely for the most part, but they aren't the problem. They are just along for the ride.
Due to the insane expenditures on healthcare in this country ($3.6 trillion per year last I checked), the "Big 8" health insurance companies' collective profits of about $35 billion accounted for just 1% of all healthcare expenditures in the US.
Simply put, take insurance companies out of the equation, and we save 1% on our healthcare costs. Not the solution we're looking for, obviously.
The problem is that the entire cost structure of healthcare in the US is broken, and every single healthcare providers -- from hospitals down to single-doctor offices -- employs billing experts to squeeze the most out of every single office visit, test, and procedure.
It's a complicated, opaque, non-free-market system where the patient has zero visibility into what he's buying until after he's bought it, and insurance is usually forced to foot the lion's share of that bill. Then insurance passes the increasingly staggering costs onto the patients via higher premiums. Rinse and repeat.
It's a "billing code" driven system. The more codes which can be applied for one visit, the better. Often multiple codes are possible for a service provided, and the billing expert makes sure to bill the most expensive one, which is totally legal. Then lobbyists sometimes get absurdly expensive codes slipped into Medicare reimbursement schedules, which also drive private insurance rates, and doctors take advantage of this until that loophole is closed. A big one recently is/was the "nuclear stress test" in cardiology -- something which is crazy expensive, usually unnecessary, and actually harmful to the patient.
Other countries don't have this nonsense. Their billing systems are simpler, and the charges are much more sane.
So why don't we just switch to socialized medicine to do away with this problem?
Because none of the single payer proposals include an overhaul of this billing code system. It stays in place, with the only change being who pays. You may hear that the government will get "Medicare rates" and save money, but that's nonsense. Medicare rates are the problem in the first place.
You might hear that socialized medicine in the US will save a ton of money due to cutting out insurance profits (see above why that is BS), or that easy access to preventative care will save money later. We already have free preventative care on Obamacare, and that has not decreased overall costs. While preventative care has its place, it's naive to believe that it saves much money in the long run, and in fact sometimes incurs extra costs because it leads to "discovering" non-problems and engaging in unnecessary treatments.
The entire billing/cost structure must be overhauled to get the US system in line with other first-world countries cost-wise. Neither party has stated a plan to do this, because lobbyists within the very powerful healthcare industry would scream bloody murder. It would result in hugely decreased profits, and they know it.
To use an analogy, say a pipe is broken in your house and leaking water all over the floor. The broken pipe is the broken medical billing system, and the water is the wasted money.
Democrats are showing up with towels and saying that if we keep wiping up the floor and making the rich buy us more towels, everything will get better, while not at all paying attention to where all the water is coming from.
Republicans are laughing at the foolish Democrats spending all that needless money on towels, but they're also not attempting to stop the flow of water, and they just shrug their shoulders and assume that as long as the water doesn't drown us, there's no point to do very much to attempt to stop it.
Both approaches are very wrong.
Your wife's plan is very inefficient, and her employer is spending a fortune to cover her. You just don't see that side of it. Your deceptively low co-pays don't mean you're getting reasonably-priced care. You're just not directly seeing the bills.
Regarding what Democrats want, yes, that's even worse. See my post above.
like everyone knows im not a bernie bro but this is one of those issues where i think bernie has a lot of potential.
but i also think that if the dems dont control the house and senate, the republicans will allow exactly zero meaningful med reform.
like i dont even want to paint that with a partisan brush, its just physics at this point. the best we can hope for if the republicans hold either the house or senate is a democrat president eliminating these tard-fest tariffs and getting us back in the anti-proliferation / climate change games at least on paper. team retard is going to vote anyone out of power who doesnt stand up against 'deep state globalism' or whatever, i cant even be mad at republican politicians for doing exactly what they did under obama. because its going to be so much worse for them if they dont this time.
"Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness." - Alejandro Jodorowsky
"America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers." -- William S. Burroughs
My favourite candidates atm
1. Bernie
2. Gabbard
3. Yang
Would be happy if either of those won. Of the two favourites I high favour Warren over Biden.
Druff I know you think this is the cause and have first hand experienced it but it’s a very small percentage of the problem.
The actual problem is obesity, 20% of all healthcare costs go to treat Type 2 diabetes and it’s related issues. They also believe that obesity is the cause of about another 30% of the healthcare costs either as a primary or secondary reason (for example, early heart disease).
It’s not popular to tell people their insurance is so expensive because they and their neighbors are fat though.
Solve the obesity epidemic, solve healthcare costs.
Sorry, but I can't agree with this.
You would be correct if the costs of healthcare were constant (inflation adjusted), but we are simply utilizing more expensive procedures due to the obesity problem. However, everything is much more expensive -- it's not a matter of what services we're utilizing.
Even if we had the same obesity rate as 1970, our healthcare costs would still be skyrocketing.
Not an expert here but I read somewhere recently that it's the administration costs that would be the biggest source of savings in a single payer system, not just Insurance Company administration but the entire industry. Every procedure would cost the same, doctors would spend far less time filling out paperwork and would also pay less in their own liability insurance, Hospitals would need fewer lawyers and fewer Hospital administrators etc.Due to the insane expenditures on healthcare in this country ($3.6 trillion per year last I checked), the "Big 8" health insurance companies' collective profits of about $35 billion accounted for just 1% of all healthcare expenditures in the US.
Simply put, take insurance companies out of the equation, and we save 1% on our healthcare costs. Not the solution we're looking for, obviously.
I don't think the plan is to just pass along Insurance Companies profit and that's it.
in a weird way, i think the medicare for all model might advance farther if a biden-type won, than bernie. we've seen this play out a million times. the more "radical" the newly-elected president is, the more his political party gets wiped out in the midterms.
if bernie somehow won, what do you think would be the effect on congressional seats in 2022, where half the country would be terrified of a socialist in the white house?
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